[wordup] Peak Oil

[Adam Shand]

this is a great write up by ryan.  i've sent it in html to preserve the 
links, hopefully that doesn't mess with people (please let me know if 
it's ugly or hard to real).

adam.

From: http://www.sino-russian.org/archives/000273.shtml

The future of energy
By wise on environment

Probably the most discussed geo-political/environmental topic recently 
by the alliance (offline) has been the subject of Peak Oil, the 
theory/observation that the world is headed soon for a peak in oil 
production and that after that point, price of extraction goes up while 
barrels pumped goes down ever after. Obviously, in oil-soaked suburban 
america, this poses some problems.

Most of you probably saw the Day-After-Tomorrow-styled apocalyptic 
scenario outlined by The Geography of Nowhere author James Howard 
Kunstler, as part of his new book, The Long Emergency. Even if the doom 
and gloom fails to pass, pieces like these are best at producing some 
long-needed discussion from every corner. Worldchanging offers a 
rebuttal here, while Boing Boing goes above and beyond the call of duty 
with a link-rich wrap up of the flurry of activity on peak oil in 
Blogsylvania.

Earlier this year, we had the good fortune of attending Stewart Brand's 
lecture for this year's Illahee series, How Cities Learn. For those of 
you who missed it, his latest article in Technology Review is a decent 
summary of the lecture. He argues, much like Erik did a while back, 
that environmentalists will have to embrace their arch nemeses, nuclear 
plants and GMOs.

My sticking point on these two has largely been the same over the 
years, namely, we don't have anything close to a realistic plan to deal 
with nuclear waste, and that the long term effects on an ecosystem that 
has, say, pig genes introduced to a tomato, is not very well known. But 
Brand makes some good arguments that at least convince me to remain on 
the fence for now.

I still don't think Brand's argument goes far enough to assuade my 
fears with GMO's. He focuses on the immediate benefits of GMO crops, 
that they have higher yield with increased resistance to insects, and 
that the amish have embraced their use heavily (as if the amish do long 
term sustainability analysis), but that still doesn't address the long 
term issues, something that's surprising for the co-founder of the long 
now foundation. IANABiologist, but doesn't making a crop more resiliant 
to insects also place selection pressures on the affected insect 
populations? and doesn't that lead to changes in the balance of the 
food chain?

However, on nuclear energy, Brand was able to convince me that the 
waste question isn't as pressing as it first appears. Apparently, if 
his sources are correct, most of the waste we produce in nuclear 
reactors still has tons of energy locked away that we either don't know 
how to harness, or don't have cost-effective ways of extracting. The 
argument is simple: the waste isn't going away, let's keep it around 
until we figure out how to suck more energy out of it. permanent 
storage is a really bad idea to me, but a temporary solution that says 
we can return to this waste and make it work for us again is the real 
long term solution. Sustainability in large part is managing and 
repurposing the waste that a system produces.
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